1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technique of troubleshooting a peripheral device linked with a client computer in a network environment including a server computer and the client computer connected with each other via the Internet.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A diversity of peripheral devices, such as a printer and a scanner, are connected to a personal computer via respective external interfaces. In the case of any abnormality or trouble arising in such a peripheral device, the user should conventionally refer to an instructions manual of the peripheral device. With advancement of recent technology, many user support pages for supporting users are open to the public on the Internet by manufacturers and dealers of the peripheral devices. Details of troubleshooting each peripheral device are on such a user support page provided by each of the manufacturers and dealers. It is, however, rather troublesome for the user to refer to the instructions manual or refer to the user support page for troubleshooting the peripheral device. General users often have difficulties in understanding the details of troubleshooting. Namely troubleshooting is rather complicated and difficult for the general user of the peripheral device.
One known system troubleshoots each peripheral device of the computer via the Internet by FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) technique. The system provides the computer in an interactive manner with a question answer window of hierarchical structure, which includes questions on common problems and troubles of each peripheral device and answers to the questions. This shows the user possible causes of a problem arising in a target device and possible measures to the problem, so as to enable solution of the problem on the user's side. This systems, however, urges the user to choose one answer among options prepared in advance for each question, regardless of the working environment of the peripheral device by the user. The user can thus not choose a precise answer in some working environment of the peripheral device. In such cases, this system proposes neither an appropriate cause nor an effective measure to the user's problem.
As mentioned above, the diversity of peripheral devices, such as a printer and a scanner, are connected to the personal computer via the respective external interfaces. Installation of a driver program applicable for each peripheral device in the personal computer is required for the accurate operations of the peripheral device. Frequent version upgrading of the driver program corresponding to each peripheral device is commonly performed to ensure the more accurate operations of the peripheral device. In order to attain the more accurate operations of the peripheral device, it is accordingly necessary to install the driver program of the latest version in the personal computer. The user is thus required to select a latest driver program according to the type of the peripheral device and the linguistic environment of the personal computer and install the selected driver program. There are lots of difficulties in such installation for the users who do not have sufficient knowledge of the personal computer and the peripheral device.